In trading markets large volumes of data are fed to market participants in a variety of formats which can vary based on the exchange from which data is sourced. Messages defining trading activity (e.g., buys, sells, puts, options, etc.) are bundled according to a variety of formats into packets and distributed at massive volumes. Designing systems that can lower latency (communication and/or processing delays) for those messages represents significant advantages to a commodities exchange and any parties participating in trading on the exchange.
Some conventional approaches have attempted to lower latency associated with processing and communicating market data as quickly as possible. In one example, a conventional system for processing market feed data relies on conventional server based components. Such systems can employ conventional CPU architectures and communicate over network interfaces cards (NICs) to process a market data feed and communicate the processed data. In another example, commodity servers can be augmented with hardware acceleration, and the hardware acceleration components can be configured to assist in processing the data from the data feed. Partially processed data can be returned from the hardware acceleration component to a conventional CPU to complete processing. In yet another example, hardware acceleration devices can include a co-processor with a convention CPU to handle offloading of processing of the data.